In grade school, we learned 
to limbo, to twist our backs 
toward the gym floor, our faces 
turned upward to fluorescent lights. 
The girls and boys with long locks 
looked as though they were being 
pulled backward by their curls 
and tresses, the earth exerting 
just enough yearning to let us know 
this is where we were meant to be. 
The bamboo pole held by classmates 
was our horizon, and we were creatures 
bending low to avoid the mortality 
it represented. 

		     Somewhere in Central America 
is a caterpillar that grips the underside 
of a stem, curls back, and puffs up 
its chest to look like a viper, 
an asp in Eden. But this is survival, 
contorting the self to appear a threat. 
What was it we were trying to mimic 
all those years ago before we cocooned? 
What predators waited in the trees, 
their wings always ready, their songs 
foretoken on the breeze? A few of us 
learned how to shift our balance, 
how to angle our legs and stretch our arms 
to keep our bodies hovering between 
gravity and the heavens. And some of us 
leaned back further into something else. 

David B. Prather

is the author of We Were Birds (Main Street Rag Publishing, 2019), and has two poetry collections forthcoming: Bending Light with Bare Hands (Fernwood Press), and Shouting at an Empty House (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions). His work has appeared in many publications, including Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, Potomac Review, Comstock Review, Sheila-Na-Gig, and others. He lives in Parkersburg, WV.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Two Poems by David B. Prather in River Heron Review (Issue 3.1, February 2020): “To Haunt America” and “Contrapuntal”

⚡ Two Poems by Prather in Still: The Journal (Issue 37, Fall 2021): “If a Tree Falls in the Forest” and “Humidity”